{"id":15027,"date":"2013-03-28T05:45:16","date_gmt":"2013-03-28T09:45:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?p=15027"},"modified":"2013-03-28T08:57:59","modified_gmt":"2013-03-28T12:57:59","slug":"jonathan-swift-and-the-jesus-stompers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2013\/03\/jonathan-swift-and-the-jesus-stompers\/","title":{"rendered":"Jonathan Swift and the Jesus stompers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

You have doubtless heard about the college that had students stomp on the name of Jesus <\/a>as an exercise in a class on cultural understanding.\u00a0 I noticed the parallel to something that happened in Gulliver\u2019s Travels<\/em> in which the satirist Jonathan Swift portrays Dutch traders as being willing to trod on a Crucifix as a way to convince the Japanese that they weren\u2019t Christians so that they could trade with that country.\u00a0 Of course, the Dutch, being Calvinists, considered the Crucifix to be an idol, so stepping on it didn\u2019t bother them.<\/p>\n

I wondered how much of that was true and how much was Swift\u2019s lampoon.\u00a0 The Dutch were the only Europeans the Japanese would trade with.\u00a0 Whether that was because they would trod on the Crucifix because of their iconoclastic theology, I\u2019m not sure, but Swift, an Anglican priest, lambastes them.\u00a0 Anyway, I was glad to see that Anthony Sacramone, who has taken up blogging again<\/a>, makes that same connection and tells us more about the requirement for blasphemy in the context of Christian persecution, now showing up in a college classroom.<\/p>\n

\n

(There was only one student who objected, by the way, and he was a Mormon.\u00a0 Did the Christians in the room just go along with it?\u00a0 Surely, desecrating the name<\/em> of Jesus would bother even iconoclasts whose distaste for physical images never extended to the use of language.)\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

From New Addition to Core Curriculum: Stomp on the Name of Jesus | Intercollegiate Review<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Among Jonathan Swift\u2019s many targets in Gulliver\u2019s Travels<\/em> are the Dutch. Strange you might say. Of all the evils to be bemoaned in the world of the 18th century, you wouldn\u2019t think the tolerant Dutch would be among them. But you must see the world through a Swiftian eye. Japan of the Tokugawa shogunate had closed itself off to foreigners \u2014 except for Dutch traders (and then only under strict conditions). There were several reasons for this, but for Swift\u2019s purposes, it was the Dutch tolerance rather than the apparent Japanese intolerance that was intolerable.<\/p>\n

The Dutch toleration within their borders of vying religious sects was synonymous in Swift\u2019s mind with a doctrinal and ecclesiastical wishy-washiness, which he despised, being a High Anglican. And so the great satirist composed a scene in which Gulliver asks the Japanese emperor if he can forgo stepping on a crucifix, as he, Gulliver, was \u201ca Christian.\u201d (What did that make the Dutch, who were allowed entry into Japan?) This ritual was resonant of the Tokugawa shogunate practice of \u201cFumi-e\u201d: anyone suspected of secretly practicing the forbidden religion of Christianity was asked to stomp on an image of Jesus or Mary. Those who refused were tortured until they renounced their faith. If they held strong, they were executed. (Some Japanese Christians managed to secret themselves away for centuries.)<\/p>\n

So any European who had access to Japan, and its trade, during this period must have been someone prepared to sell out his faith for a mess of patronage.<\/p>\n

We now come to Florida Atlantic University, famous the world over for absolutely nothing. At least until recently, when an FAU professor asked his class to write the name \u201cJesus\u201d on a piece of paper and . . . stomp on it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read the rest here<\/a>.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You have doubtless heard about the college that had students stomp on the name of Jesus as an exercise in a class on cultural understanding.\u00a0 I noticed the parallel to something that happened in Gulliver\u2019s Travels in which the satirist Jonathan Swift portrays Dutch traders as being willing to trod on a Crucifix as a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1281,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,14,28],"tags":[182,2509,2508],"class_list":["post-15027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christ","category-education","category-literature","tag-anti-christian-bigotry","tag-blasphemy","tag-jonathan-swift"],"yoast_head":"\nJonathan Swift and the Jesus stompers<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"You have doubtless heard about the college that had students stomp on the name of Jesus as an exercise in a class on 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